Pandemic: State of Emergency and In the Lab

Jim let us try out these expansions for Pandemic that he's had for awhile and they both can change the base game just enough to make it feel different again.

State of Emergency

While this adds a Super bug (purple cubes) challenge and lock down tokens where you can pay a card to quarantine a city (up to 4, or 6 is someone is using the Colonel role) which prevents disease cubes spawning on it twice, the "bigger" change is when you use the Hinterlands challenge that adds two mini boards next to the world map which depict the animals in those regions also spreading the disease.

You can normally only move to them through one of the five cities they are attached to meaning they're hard to get to, but once there you can trade any card of that color with another player in the same Hinterland region (as opposed to exactly the same city). On the negative side, should a Hinterland outbreak - all the connected cities get hit as well and vice versa.

In the Lab

This one also adds a new board, the Lab, where someone must spend turns sequencing the cure for each virus. On the flip side, instead of one person needing 5 of the same colored cards to make a cure those can now come from numerous players. It's a nice mini-game but someone will probably be locked in there the whole game so that's a bit hit or miss.

Are either compelling enough for me to purchase for myself? No, I think I've burned out on old Pandemic. Happy to play Pandemic: Fall of Rome though, where the "virus" is people!